[Aptorian]

I think, if you want to make comparisons with human evolution, the Imass are Neanderthals. The Eres'al are more like a mix between monkey and man. Destinctly humanoid but much more primal.

[Dolorous Menhir]

Hetan;317541 said:

I too have always supposed that child to be the Eres'al
I think it happened too long ago to be Kettle - these are Deragoth we are talking about, and I still think it's Dessimbelackis with them.

That doesn't make any sense though - the Eres'al is supposed to be the first sentient evolutionary predecessor to humans. Not the last of a dying race of sentient pre-humans.

[bhok'arala]

why because they have sloping brows? you racist!

i don't think i have an analogy for that... (thank god for wikipedia) Homo rhodesiensis. there. primal monkey-man.

remember, evoulution isnt straight forward. Homo sapiens have been around for 250,000 years. theres about 7 other homos (not a pun) that also lived during said time period

[Imperial Historian]

Quote

That doesn't make any sense though - the Eres'al is supposed to be the first sentient evolutionary predecessor to humans. Not the last of a dying race of sentient pre-humans.

Yes but with a time-traveller the differences between first and last could be nothing, it's my belief that she's the first and last. Ok it is a bit out there, but I like it, and I'm sticking to it.

[bhok'arala]

kind of like silverfox? the one and only flesh and blood bonecaster (that hasn't gone through that part of Tellan in RG)

[Aptorian]

You know that always bothered me. Kilava is a bonecaster, she's flesh and blood and mighty powerfull.

I wonder if the reason she wasn't used was the simple fact that she severed herself my destroying her clan and therefore the T'lan Imass can't use her.

[bhok'arala]

you know i didn't know that that bothered you. when did that come up before? if i insulted your intelligence with that comment, i aplogize.

there are always loopholes though. throughout the books the motif of being used is very strong. if the imass can't they'll find someone who can. and then betray them.

[bhok'arala]

heres a quote that shows that eres'al could be the result of sentient beings. just replace tools with the race of your choice (its the quote that counts

"Until about 50,000–40,000 years ago the use of stone tools seems to have progressed stepwise: each phase (habilis, ergaster, neanderthal) started at a higher level than the previous one, but once that phase had started further development was slow. In other words, one might call these Homo species culturally conservative."

[Dolorous Menhir]

Imperial Historian;317757 said:

Yes but with a time-traveller the differences between first and last could be nothing, it's my belief that she's the first and last. Ok it is a bit out there, but I like it, and I'm sticking to it.

Don't really see it. The Eres'al time travel ability seems to me to be intimately related to her being the first truly intelligent human ancestor. That made her unique, which is why only she can travel through time. You can excuse all sorts of Eres'al related confusion by pointing to the time travel.

But I don't see how you can start with the last survivor of a dying human race/species - who should have no power of time travel, because she's nothing special - and get her to go backwards in time to become the Eres'al with all the powers that implies.

In other news, I need to think of an alternate way of saying "time travel," as it gets a bit repetitive.

[Sinisdar Toste]

how bout 'fuck you logic'?

but as to the eres, i think that she was just a dying monkey-girl until bottles visions came to her and they gave her power, she glimpsed the future and, like with tocs vision in treach, ascended. remember there are many paths to ascension.

as an aside, i recently developed a pet theory that the ugly old couple in letheras at sinker lake and the fisherman and his blind wife from NoK are ascendant couples, like togg and fanderay who ascended simply through true love, a very romantic notion that SE seems to have tucked in amidst all of this death and tragedy. gods that man is a genius.

[bhok'arala]

Dolorous Menhir;317847 said:

But I don't see how you can start with the last survivor of a dying human race/species - who should have no power of time travel, because she's nothing special - and get her to go backwards in time to become the Eres'al with all the powers that implies.

but, if every eres'al had timetravel abilities, she would still be nothing special. (now ther's a twist...)

Sinisdar Toste;317866 said:

but as to the eres, i think that she was just a dying monkey-girl until bottles visions came to her and they gave her power, she glimpsed the future and, like with tocs vision in treach, ascended. remember there are many paths to ascension.

remember, the eres gave power to bottle during the march to lether (right march?). if the power was originally bottle's, the ending power would remain the same. otherwise, the eres would have to be able to manipulate power in such a way that it multiplies without the strain it normally puts on mortals. (and it turns out that strain makes bottle go wee wee.)

[bhok'arala]

again, if everyone was special, they wouldn't really be special.

what happenned to the eres'al to make them uniinnocent?

this just proves my theory that it was the last eres known to be alive, not really the last one. the last innocent ancestor of our line pretty much states that there are others, just not innocent. the innocence does match kettle's personality but is a bit of a stretch.

in that quote bottle says our line. suggesting that humans are actually impure and uninnocent eres'al.

i hope to hood that eres'al can't time-travel cause that'll make my timeline a hell of al lot harder if everyone is going back and forth and such.

[OtataralDragon]

The Eres were innocent. When they developed into the Imass, that innocence was lost. And then came humans, who most certainly are not innocent.

As for "if everyone was special, it wouldn't be special" - that's both true and not, depending on where you stand. If you're an Eres, then being an Eres is nothing special. If you're not, then you see the whole race from the outside and call them special (because they're all bonecasters, among other things).

Look at the Tiste. To humans, any Tiste is special, even if they may not be by Tiste standards. Or Jaghut. Try pointing at an "ordinary" Jaghut and saying there's nothing special about him/her. Toblakai? Forkrul Assail?

[Dolorous Menhir]

Hetan;318077 said:

Bottle: '... because she is the last innocent creature, the last innocent ancestor of our line. After her the degradation of spirit begins.' (BH UK Tpb. p.209)

In addition, all Eres were bonecasters - which makes them all pretty special.

As far as I can tell, this supports my point. The Eres'al is unique because she was the last "innocent ancestor". This rules out any chance of her being the last Tasse survivor, as proposed in the original post. The scene where she was taken by the Master of the Hounds was in First Empire times, when "modern" humans were already on the go.

I just don't see any conceivable way you can get from that last member of a dying subspecies to the first "innocent" and sentient member of a human ancestor race.

[Seed]

Closed time-like curves make my brain hurt.

I think the last innocent ancestor thing has something to do with the Eres evolving from that point on into the Imass. Up until that point the eres were at the pinnacle of their evolution, they were everything they could be and had no impetus for change. Eres'als experiences kick started change and was probably the hallmark of the birth of the line that would eventually become the Imass and then Human. She is the First Ancestor of everyone. All other Eres would eventually die out, not being able to compete with the new vigourous breeds arising over generations, except for a bunch that remained under the custodianship of the deragoth.

[Aptorian]

I would claim that the Imass were innocent aswell. Tnen they underwent the Ritual of Tellann and they lost their innocense. In a sense for ever severing the link between Eres'al and what would become humanity.

Sinisdar Toste;317866 said:

as an aside, i recently developed a pet theory that the ugly old couple in letheras at sinker lake and the fisherman and his blind wife from NoK are ascendant couples, like togg and fanderay who ascended simply through true love, a very romantic notion that SE seems to have tucked in amidst all of this death and tragedy. gods that man is a genius.

The couple by the lake certainly are ascended. They have been sitting by that lake for centuries if not millenia.

The Fisher couple are a bigger mystery. We don't really get any info on them.

[Cougar]

Imass were not innocent from the point they became fully sentient since they fought and killed. No being genuinely possessed of mind, in the human sense can be innocent.

The Eres'al has no malice as far as we can tell, she is simple like a child. It may be that she has an understanding of the universe and world which is inate rather than intelligent in the true sense. Not instinctive like an animal but lacking the self awareness of humanity.

I think there is some merit to what IH is saying, although it may not be so straightforward as she went back in time an became the Eres'al.

[Abyss]

Just to complicate things, throw in memory warrens and echoes of past times into the mix, and the whole concept of racial sentience is wide open for interpretation. In MoI, the Mhybe during one of her dreams described Tellan (or Telas, not certain) as somethig like 'the world's innocence'. The Beast Hold warren we see in TB is described as "primal"... so basically we have entire dimensions/realities co-existing with the main world, and throw in the eres'al, who can apparently travel between them at will.

So at the point when the Eres'al acheived some level of awareness and/or time travel, she could be anywhere, anywhen.

Which also means, if she's connected to the Tasse, thatcould be by way of any other warren or time period - ie: she shags Trull in HoC while he's travelling thru the Tellan warren, then goes back in time, spawns the Tasse, who grow up and stagnate as a race during the First Empire....


- Abyss, ....the timeline is not important, the timeline is not important....

[bhok'arala]

just to mix things up a bit: when the t'lan imass went through the first ritual, they severed themselves from humanity as stated above. now, how many t'lan thought that this was in fact a purification, perhaps a deed was done and the Imass thought to right it, or deserve punishment.

primal and innocent are both subjective however. if the forkrul assail were much newer to the world, the might see humans as primitive; which the humans would undoubtedly refute with the evidence that the t'lan are more so then them.

in that quote bottle said our race. is there any link between eres'al, imass, and human? couldn't the people who didn't go through with the first ritual become humans? t'lan like onrack and t'oolan are "broken". so what about those who were never joined? they can't be "broken if they were never together.

if some logros and kron imass tok part of the ritual, they would become t'lan right? or are all those groups 'undead'? it was my understanding that the ritual created the t'lan; the same way the ay became t'lan ay after the ritual. if this is so, could there be a possibility that there is another imass group which undertook the ritual wholly?